PlayStation

If I asked you what’s the first thing that comes to mind about the history of television, you’d most probably bring up names like John Logie Baird, or Marconi. Or perhaps give a detailed description of a post-war family huddled around a box the size of a modern-day London apartment watching Ajax commercials and Blue Peter. You may be of a younger age group and perhaps recall a time when you ‘had to get up to switch the channels’, or ‘the remote control was actually connected by a cord’, or that a television cost a decades wages.

What may not come to the forefront of your mind is the fact that Japan joined the world of broadcasting in 1950, making it one of the first countries in the world with a full, yet experimental, television service. In 1979 Japan was at the forefront again, with NHK launching the world’s firstconsumer HDTV television service. By 1981, Sony was developing HD video cameras, and by April 1984 had consumer products available in shops nationwide.

Sony. Inventors of Betamax. The Walkman. MiniDisc. Hi-MD. SDDS. 3.5″ Floppy Disks. Blu Ray. This shortlist alone makes for quite a staggering portfolio. So how did a company with such an illustrious technological history make such a catastrophic mess of things with their venture in to IPTV (Internet Protocol television)? Let’s find out with a real first-hand look at PlayStation Vue from someone who actually used the service. Me.

It’s difficult to leap in to this review without making it first obvious that I am a massive, near-on obsessive fan of the Darius series of video games. From posters to Laserdiscs, to tote bags to model kits, to soundtracks to VHS tapes to the games themselves. You name it, if it’s Darius-related,I’ve either owned it or it’s currently in my collection. So when Darius Burst Chronicle Saviours was announced for the PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, you could say I was mildly excited upon reading said news.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to dig out a bunch of PlayStation 2 games and give them all a bit of a once over. Stretch their legs after a long time dormant so to speak. One of the games I dug out was Metal Slug 6. A title in the famous and much-loved Metal Slug series that I think doesn’t quite get the recognition it so richly deserves. When you ask someone which of the Metal Slug games is their personal favourite, you will nearly always receive responses around any title except Metal Slug 6. To be honest up unitl yesterday afternoon I would very likely have delivered the same response.

A while ago I made a decision. Since then I’ve made many hundreds of thousands of decisions, every second of my life in fact. But the decision I made ‘a while ago’ was a very important (cue pun) game-changing decision. I decided the end was near (and we’d just moved house and I hadn’t the room any more). It was time to say goodbye to the humble, beautiful world of the cathode ray tube.
Forever.